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The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards has an impressive legacy dating back to 1923. Over the years, the Awards have grown to become the longest-running, most prestigious recognition program for creative teens in the U.S., and the nation’s largest source of scholarships for creative young artists and writers. A noteworthy roster of past winners includes Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Robert Redford, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, John Updike, and many more.

This semester of art went into more detail about shading which I found quite difficult. I feel that without proper materials it is very straining to make these pictures looks very surreal or life like. Even though it was a challenge I strived to do the best drawing I could do.

The drawing below are my drawings from quarter one and two. Last year I already did the drawings for quarter one so this year I just colored a couple and redraw a few. And then I did the rest of the drawings for the second quarter but didn't get to lesson M from drawspace.org.

For quarter two, I decided you have my pictures set around "pencil" drawings. I decided to do this because adding color to a picture automatically brings life to the drawing but I wanted to bring life to the drawing with out color. I wanted to see if I had the ability to still set the standards of "eye catching" drawings with pencil. I thought I did a fairly good on this quarter.

On the final drawing, I found a picture of a flower in a cup. I thought this was a really beautiful picture and decided to draw it as the artist that I wanted to write on but when it came down to finding the artist behind the picture, it came up as unknown. So I put both the original and my version of the drawing up. The artist's name on the picture is named V.G. Phelps, but again, there is not information on him.

The last couple of months I have been taking photographs around the city. I have been walking around with my camera and capturing anything I see that I think is interesting to the eye.

Vivian Maier: Life Story

Vivian Maier was born on February 1, 1926. She was born in New York City and spent much of her childhood in France. When she returned to the United States, she worked as a nanny in Chicago, Illinois for almost forty years. During that time, she took more than 100,000 photos. Most of her images were of people on the streets or cityscapes of Chicago.

In 1951, Vivian Maier moved from France to New York. She was 25 years old. When she moved back she worked in a sweatshop. She made her way to Chicago by 1956.

Almost all of the images that Vivian Maier took in the forty years of photographing the streets of Chicago were left undeveloped in the homes of families she had nannied for. She kept boxes of mostly negatives that she had shot with her Rolliflex camera. Towards the end of her life she lived off of social security income and the children that she had nannied for, bought her an apartment in Chicago. In 2008, she slipped on ice and was hurt. She eventually passed away in April of 2009 at the age of 83.

A few years ago, a local historian in Chicago, named John Maloof, purchased a box of Maier’s negatives. Vivian Maier never planned to use her images to be known for. She kept them undeveloped and unseen. She used it as a hobby that passed the time when she took her walks through the city. So she could capture every interesting thing she discovered.

Street photography is taking images of real world, candid shots of modern life. They are unaltered images of the human condition in public places. This type of photography is very similar to another subject documentary photography. This is taking shots of neighborhoods and documenting the architecture and the culture of the ages.

The first photograph is one that I took. A recreation of a piece of Vivian Maier's.

This quarter I was able to get more practice in shading. There were some drawings that required a lot of patience and I think these were the hardest ones for me. The lessons helped increase my confidence with drawing pencils so I attempted some portraits. Overall I enjoyed practicing drawing in detail

This quarter, in addition to following along the online teachings, I painted a ceiling tile with Leah Petty. It was really cool to try out this different style of art, and I really enjoyed working with the paint. I hope I can paint more in the coming quarters. As far as the sketches go, I really enjoyed the lessons on blending and shading, I thought they added a really interesting effect to the artwork and was really proud of some of the pieces I managed to create.

This quarter, with Ms. Hull's consent, I strayed away from the normal 2-day a week curriculum. Instead, I focused on my individual skill when it came to drawing portraits. Portrait drawing has always been a struggle for me, so I thought that I should face my biggest struggle head on. Overall, although their was very few pieces, total, I spent 21 hours doing these drawings. 8 for the first drawing, 8 for the second, and 5 for the last. My biggest goal was to simply improve with each drawing that I did, which I do believe that I did. Enjoy!

This quarter I tried to focus on a little bit more physical art as opposed to design. I started off the quarter by spending a few weeks on a ceiling tile inspired by my previous sticker art squids and marine life. For christmas I got a NeoLucida as a gift (click link to learn more) A NeoLucida is a prism that you look through and it projects an object sitting in from of you onto your paper (sort-of). I've spent a lot of time futzing with the NeoLucida and don't have a lot to show for it, but once I figure out how to make things do right side up, I'm excited to do some more serious drawing with it. I've also been casually challenged with designing a chicken coop for small backyards in Philly (drawings above). And on a more serious note, designing a scarf that will be sold and put into production in the spring. I haven't stopped designing either, this quarter I designed Ms. Ramis Website (meenoorami.org) and designed and layed out an entire 50 page magazine among re-designing my logo (for the first time since 5th grade) and my website.

I really got into water colors this year, I am still trying my best the learn how to use them well, but this is what I did for Q2. I also made a tile of Louise from the FOX show bob's burgers, I feel like there is a little Louise in everyone that goes to SLA. She's a little edgy and speaks her mind, but is still I kid. As i was painting Louise I looked back to when I was younger I loved NICK, and really who didn't. Fairly Oddparent's was one of my favorite shows growing up, so I drew Cosmo from the show, the guy with the green hair. I remember when I was little I tried my little heart out trying to draw Sqiudward, from Sponge Bob. I was never real a fan of the show, I thought it was very dumb and had no morals to it at all. But I remember trying to draw him free hand it it was a mess, so now that I am sixteen I tried again free hand, no website helping me just drawing and I did it.